SULLIVAN: Remembering Jim Wilcox and Chief Jay Strongbow

Two recent deaths hit home with this writer. Some memories and thoughts on Jim Wilcox and Chief Jay Strongbow.

Greg Sullivan

Two recent deaths – one of local note, the other national – hit home with this writer.

JIM WILCOX

Though never convinced, I was always suspicious that Jim Wilcox had been cloned. The former Durfee High teacher, social sciences department head, union head, coach, track and football official, was apt to pop up virtually anywhere my job as a sports writer took me locally. Also a former track and cross-country correspondent here at The Herald News (that’s going back three decades), big Jim died last week at age 70.

Photographer Dave Souza, one of the few other real HN old-timers in the newsroom, was very surprised, at both Jim’s passing and his age. “He always looked so healthy,” Souza said.

In terms of the hundreds of times our paths crossed, what seemed to float Jim’s boat most was when he had an interesting bit of information about a local athlete – something I had missed that might be worth getting into the newspaper. In addition to being a caring guy, Jim, remember, was also a former reporter. So he had that radar going all the time and had a knack for latching onto worthwhile bits of sports information. That will be missed.

I should have known something was wrong a couple of weeks ago when there was no Jim Wilcox at the Durfee track and field meet at the high school he so loved. It was a cold day but that alone never would have kept Jim Wilcox away.

Though my brain knows that Jim Wilcox is gone, a part of me will still, for a while, expect to see him or hear from him with that next tip, that next bit of trivia, or just that next good old quick stroll down memory lane.

My oldest memories of Mr. Wilcox are of him refereeing some of my CYO basketball games. Tall, lean and blessed with long arms, Jim, when he’d signal for a 1-and-1, looked like a 747 coming in for a landing.

Virtually all of the remaining memories came on the job – whether it was at the track, at a cross-country meet, at a football game or at a gym. Jim had lot of stories, from both his coaching (I believe he even coached football for a year at Portsmouth Abbey) and officiating experiences.

Game officials catch plenty of grief from players and coaches and Jim seemed to handle that well. He used to tell me about those times when a coach would plead incessantly for a call, he would have to tell him, “Coach, don’t grovel. It’s beneath you.”

Don’t know if Jim was a high-tech gadget guy as a whole, but he certainly stayed on top of things as far as officiating went. A couple of years ago, at an indoor track and field meet at Durfee, he sported a device that made me envious. It was self-contained public address system which, if memory serves me, involved the box-like speaker secured to his hip and, of course, the microphone, which might have been part of a head-set. He used it to call runners to events and to bark out whatever commands were necessary to keep the meet rolling. It may not have been any more effective than a megaphone, but it was much cooler. I could put that baby to use when it’s time time to hunt down my Ian in the neighborhood to get him home for supper.

CHIEF JAY STRONGBOW

I discovered pro wrestling on TV in 1970 and quickly got hooked. It came on Channel 56 out of Boston, Saturday mornings at 11, It was my original must-see TV.

And with all due respect to Pedro Morales, Bruno Sammartino, Andre the Giant, Lou Albano, Prof. Toru Tanaka, Sky Low Low, the Grand Wizard , the man who epitomized WWWF wrestling at that time was the great Chief Jay Strongbow. This observation is not based solely on personal belief but by how often his name gets mentioned by folks I talk to about that wrestling era.

In case you missed it, Chief died last week at 83.

Billed as Chief Jay Strongbow from Pawhuska, Okla. he was really Joe Scarpa from Philadelphia. But that’s OK. What’s in a name, anyway? Heck, for at least the first two years of watching wrestling, I thought Chief’s last name was Strongbone.

Chief was the main, the most reliable, and most betrayed babyface (good guy) of that era, a star who frequently performed at Lincoln Park in Dartmouth.

But he struggled to maintain his professional friendhsips. Tag team partner Jimmy Valiant turned heel (bad guy) on Chief. Tag team partner Peter Maivia (a Samoan high chief) did the same. Spiros Arion (the Benedict Arnold of the wrestling world) also pulled this crap on Chief, I think. But they all subsequently had to deal with the Chief’s war dance.

Oh, that war dance. Nothing was better. It was like Popeye cracking open a can of spinach. Underdog popping his illegal energy pill.

Having been beaten down for the previous few minutes of a match, Strongbow, urged on by the fans’ war cries (stereotypical but fabulous) would suddenly become impervious to pain and then break into his war dance (man, he had good foot work), inspiring old-time TV announcer Bill Cardell to cry, “Light up Broadway.”

Then came the politically incorrect tomahawk chop, followed by the leg lift, and then followed by a pin or the dreaded sleeper hold he mastered sometime in the early or mid-70s.

There were those occasions when our beloved Chief didn’t get he chance to break into his war dance. Like the frightful Saturday morning when stupid stupid WWWF officials decided to present Strongbow with the “Most Popular Wrestler trophy while Tarzan Tyler and Crazy Luke Graham (can you guess they were bad guys?) and manager Albano were also in the ring waiting to wrestle. Moments after the announcement of the award, the gigantic trophy had been broken over the Chief’s head, he was bleeding profusely, and his beloved head dress had been ripped apart with the feathers stuffed into his mouth. That experience bordered on traumatic for me. A longtime friend of mine, basketball and baseball official Dave Audet, will tell you to this day that he couldn’t eat for two days after witnessing that attack.

Of course, for the next three weeks, whenever Tyler and Graham wrestled, Chief, swinging his actual tomahawk, would storm into the ring and chase those cowardly villains back to the locker room where, we all hoped, he would chop them to bits. Sorry, but it was that intense for me.

Former wrestling superstar Greg Valentine told me during an interview a few years ago what an incredible pro Strongbow was to work with. Those two ran a great feud in the late 70s after Valentine “broke” Chief’s leg. Valentine explained in the interview how the Chief was a master of building the suspense, of taking the punishment. He didn’t wrestle a match like a tornado. Instead, he told a story, getting the fans anticipate his comeback.

It was a tad depressing when, in the 1980s, Chief got downright fat and couldn’t maintain the length of his war dance. I wouldn’t have been as hard on him about that had I realized at that point he was in his 50s and had been a sensational war dancer well past the age of 40. For that unfair criticism, I apologize to his relatives.

My family (and perhaps neighbors) can vouch for the impact and lingering effect Chief Jay Strongbow has had on my life.

Step through the front door at the right time and you’ll find me chasing one or more of the kids around while doing my best imitation (feeble compared to the original) of the Chief Jay Strongbow war dance. These in-house episodes always start with me “hearing” the at-first faint but then steadily growing “Oooooo” war cries (provided by myself) before breaking into the dance. Yes, my kids have been subjected to tomahawk chops, leg lifts, and sleepers. (Haven’t tried them yet on Lynne.)

Ian, 7, especially loves the whole routine. Sometimes he’ll come up to me and politely ask, “Dad, can you do the 'Oooooo?'”

A fitting tribute to the Chief.

Email staff reporter Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com.

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